Improving food culture and provision in schools

Aims of the partnership

• More schools meeting the School Food Standards throughout the school day, not just at lunch
• Reaching around 80 schools located in areas with high childhood obesity rates and making the food on offer healthier for the long term

The aims of the partnership will be updated as the evaluation progresses.

Connection to our strategy

We know many of the causes of, and some solutions to, the issue of unhealthy food in schools. We want to deliver projects where we can have the biggest impact on reducing the childhood obesity inequality gap through addressing these, both in terms of local delivery and informing policy at a national level.

Since we launched our childhood obesity programme, we have funded a mix of projects to help us better understand what childhood obesity looks like in our inner-city setting. Within our schools strand of work, this has focused on working within schools themselves and with local stakeholders to understand what the food environment looks like for children.

Through that work, we realised that, for complex and varied reasons, many schools do not meet the School Food Standards, which are designed to support schools to provide nutritious meals for children that encourage healthy eating habits.

After finding this out, we wanted to deliver a project that improved the healthiness of food in schools. At a minimum, this means reaching the School Food Standards, ensuring school food includes fresh fruit and vegetables, and balanced meals with correct portion sizes.

In 2017, we partnered with School Food Matters on a small project to focus on the food environment in three schools, before co-developing this significantly larger project.